|
|
Vol. 4, No. 1 - June 1998
"I
JUST DON'T CARE..." - Reflections on Diversity and Knowing Jesus Christ
|
I told you in the last issue three years ago that the canon was closed. You were to get no more quick fixes for your house church habit. I wasn't going to publish any more NRR's. You would have to take the old ones, meditate upon them, memorize them, put them into phylacteries and bind them to your heads, etc. However, during the last three years I have been wracked with guilt. How could I have let you kind readers suffer so? And so, NRR is revived, until I get pooped again...
Surgeon General's Warning!! I tried to get rid of these subversive pests! For three years they disappeared, and now they are back! Don't read any further!!!!!!!
Before I begin, please memorize and repeat three times the following statement: "Dan Trotter believes in theology, Bible Study, healing, miracles, tongues, prophecy, prayer, evangelism, helping the poor, the Christian family, the pro-life movement, home-schooling, visiting the sick, jail ministry, promise-keeping, and teen-age virginity." Now, if at any time during your reading of the rest of this issue, you find yourself wanting to believe that I am against some Christian thing that you believe to be the most wonderful thing in the world, I want you to repeat that statement like a mantra till you are convinced that I am not against any of those things. I am always amazed at how many neophyte house-churchers think how easy it's going to be, who don't realize how rotten, perverse, filthy, evil, wicked, mean and nasty they are going to be to each other when the new wears off. Paul told the Ephesians that the church was to be "knit together" (Eph 4:16 "...the body fitly framed and knit together...") This implies to me that it is not the natural state of fallen man to dwell together in peace, joy, love, and unity.
I
am always amazed at how many neophyte house-churchers think how easy it's
going to be, who don't realize how rotten, perverse, filthy, evil, wicked,
mean, and nasty they are going to be...
What are some of the things that can blow a house church wide open? I will mention four broad categories; I am sure you can think of more. All of these things lead to a deplorable state of Christian tribalism. First, a "Word" attitude versus a "Spirit" attitude. Let me quote you from a previous issue of NRR. (quoted by permission of the author, i.e., me). You will note that the author falls neatly between "Word" extremists (quaintly styled "Pin-Headed Literalists") and "Spirit" extremists (labeled "Navel-Contemplating Mystics"). First, the author daringly deals with the Pin-Headed Literalists by quoting from Gene Edwards (Editor's Note: For all of you who are mad at Gene Edwards, please skip the following quotation. For the two or three of you who remain, please read on...) "Constantine gave the Christian faith one of the two greatest curses ever... He gave us theology!... [T]heology is but the philosophical mindset dealing with the Christian faith... We have now lived with this damnable curse for seventeen hundred years. Since that hour, the Holy Scripture has been approached as a riddle - a theological puzzle to be unraveled - rather than the the vibrant record of men who penned their words in the midst of a dynamic, living faith." Next the editor of NRR takes deadly aim at the other extremists - the Navel Contemplating Mystics: "House church pietists... express their... concerns about the misuse of doctrine... with rhetoric that leaves them wide open to the impression that they are vacuum-brained, crypto-Buddhist New Agers." A system church will not contain a mystic and a literalist in the same organization. They will fight each other to the death.. For examples of this, look at how well the Catholic church and Jeanne Guyon got along, or the Old Light and New Light Presbyterians in American church history, or the Virginia Anglicans and the Separate Baptists, or the Anglicans and the Wesleyans in England, or Jonathan Edwards and the established Protestant church during the Great Awakening, or the conservative Evangelical church and the charismatics in modern times. And house churches are no different than system churches: the "Spirit" Christians will talk about all the dead legalism of "doctrine" (as if "doctrine" were a dirty word); they'll refer to their "Word" brethren as the "frozen chosen," seminaries as "cemeteries," and they'll quote John 5:39 about Pharisees searching the Scriptures and not finding Jesus in the Scriptures (and by implication, labeling their "Word" brethren as Pharisees), and they'll quote "the letter killeth, but the spirit gives life" till they are blue in the face. On the other hand, the "Word" Christians will aim at the "Spirit" Christians such words as "enthusiasm," "mysticism," "emotionalism," "pietism," (as if "pietism" were a dirty word). And they'll quote "propositional truth" until they are blue in the face. The second category of things that will blow a house church sky high is doctrinal things. (Stop right here! If you are thinking about adopting a church constitution to avoid this problem, don't even think about it any more!) Here are some of the more weighty doctrinal issues that must, absolutely must, in the minds of many Christians, be settled before Christian fellowship can occur:
The third class of things divisive may be described as personality traits. Gene Edwards, in Preventing a Church Split points out that there are three personality types in the church: Thinkers, Be'ers, and Doers. Thinkers are into doctrinal things such as eschatology, authority and submission, and sovereignty of God versus the free will of man. Be'ers are into pietistic or mystical things. They "practice the presence of Jesus." They are into the "deeper life." They talk about how it's "fun just lovin' on Jesus." (Thinkers and be'ers roughly describe the "Word" and "Spirit" Christians I mentioned earlier).
The scope of a Doers' action is limitless. Here is a partial list of things a Doer might be in to (this is borrowed from Preventing a Church Split): missions, youth ministries, deliverance from demons, counseling and inner healing, ministering to the poor, visiting the sick, caring for the aged, jail ministry, arranging meetings, discipling, prophesying, singles ministries, marriage counseling, Christian education, home schooling, political causes, Christian finance, Christian fatherhood and promise-keeping, the promotion of teen-age virginity, and churchplanting and administration. May God help you if you get dedicated Thinkers, Be'ers, and Doers in your church. You are doomed to divide. Thinkers, Be'ers, and Doers are not even from the same planet. The fourth category of things that will split the brethren apart are what I call "timing" issues. For example: "I was very interested in getting close to you so I could discuss the Scriptural approach to ecological breast-freeding, but my children are weaned now, and I really don't give a rip about this any more." Or: "I was very interested in learning about the superiority of grace over law, but I've already done that, and I'm not as interested as you are in that subject right now." Or: "I loved home-schooling, but I don't want to talk to you about that now, because my kids are all grown and graduated." We are constantly changing, and we are all at different levels of maturity, which means our interests are likely to diverge monstrously as time goes on. And this is one more reason to fly apart. So what's the answer? Here are some solutions that won't work. Find a common doctrine. The idea is: if we can just agree on what we believe, we won't fight anymore. Look at how well this has worked. The Baptists all believe in baptism by immersion - do Baptists fight? The Calvinists all believe in predestination and the sovereignty of God. Have you ever seen a three-point and a five-point Calvinist go at it? The charismatics all believe in the baptism of the Holy Spirit and spiritual gifts. But have you ever seen the way the name-it-and-claim-it, blab-it-and-grab-it, mark-it-and-park-it, confess-it-and-possess-it charismatics treat the charismatics in the doubt-and-unbelief camp? Find a common project. The ideas is, we'll subordinate our differences working on the project. Relevant questions to ask: what happens when the project is completed? What happens when the brethren can't agree on which project to attempt? Find people from common social and vocational backgrounds. The idea is, since people are so different, they can't get along, so let's get rid of the differences. But: are not most churches in your acquaintance homogeneous socially? Of course they are, and notoriously so. And do they split? Sure they do, like atoms at Chernobyl. And is it a good thing to segregate the churches demographically? Should we have all white and all black churches? All old or all young churches? All white-collar or blue-collar churches? All rich or all poor churches? Does this really sound like the New Testament church in which there was no Jew nor Greek, etc.?
So, I JUST DON'T CARE about all that other stuff. And what's the answer to the terrible centrifugal forces of diversity that threaten every house church which is made from human beings? May I suggest that the answer may be found in the first few words of Phillippians 3:10, in which Paul states: "I want to KNOW CHRIST..." Knowing Christ. That is the only thing I care about. And that is the only thing that will hold you together. Not all those other things I have already mentioned (and please note: I never said those other things weren't important; just that you can't build a lasting church upon them). Let me quote from my good friend Steve Atkerson of the New Testament Restoration Foundation, who states in the introduction to Toward a House Church Theology that "[w]ith Paul, we want to 'know Christ...' ALL ELSE IN LIFE IS SECONDARY TO THIS" (Emphasis mine). Steve is right. If everyone in your house church wants to know Christ primarily, and puts all the other things I've mentioned secondarily, you will succeed. You will endure. You will be a blessing instead of a curse to the stumbling humanity you impact. But, by golly, if you don't... Knowing Christ... There are two kinds of knowing: objective, and subjective. In French, the subjective, personal knowing of someone is denoted by connaitre. To know objectively, about someone, is represented by savoir. So the French have two entirely different words for two entirely different concepts. Unfortunately, in English we have only one word for the two different kinds of knowing. A look into Vines will tell us that the Greek word commonly translated by the English word "know" is ginosko. Vines indicates that ginosko "frequently indicates a RELATION between the person knowing and the object known." Also, "what is known is of value or importance to the one who knows..., hence the establishment of the RELATIONSHIP." Vines states that knowing suggests APPROVAL and bears the meaning "to be approved," that there is an idea of APPRECIATION, that "such knowledge is obtained, not by mere intellectual activity, but by operation of the Holy Spirit," that the word conveys the thought of connection or union, as between man and woman. Think of that last idea. Matthew 1:25 states: "But he [Joseph] did not KNOW [ginosko] her [Mary]..." Here, the closest possible human relationship is represented by ginosko. I don't think it's any coincidence that the Holy Spirit uses this same relationship as one of the major metaphors to describe the relationship of Jesus and his church. As a man KNOWS his bride, Jesus wants to KNOW his bride. So my humble exhortation to you is this: if you are a navel-contemplating mystic, quit contemplating your navel for a while and start knowing your Lord. If you are a pin-headed literalist, put away your Bible studies for a while and start knowing your Lord. If you are a charismatic, put down your guitars and whistles for a while and start knowing your Lord. If you are a thinker, quit thinking for a while and start knowing your Lord. If you are a doer, quit doing for a while, and start knowing your Lord. And how do you get to know your Lord? Church life, folks, church life... -By Dan Trotter |
You may send your opinions, flames, weighty observations, etc., to
Dan L. Trotter
work e-mail:
dtrotter@pascal.coker.edu
home e-mail: dantrotter@yahoo.com
Since 09/30/00 this number of people have ignored the Surgeon General's warning and have read this thing, resulting in gosh knows how much mental and emotional trauma:
